‘LHHNYS8’ Recap: The Ratchets That Started It All Welcome Anais, Plus Safaree Is Back

Mendeecees tires to run Yandy from prison while Anais wants that spark back.

Our favorite ratchets from up top are back. Yup, the Love and Hip-Hop that started it all–New York is back taking over our Monday nights.The episode opens with Remy Ma flying high in a helicopter. She had a great year for her career. She’s all the way up. Get it? Producers sanctioned that helicopter ride as a metaphor.

DJ Self is back and we’re still tying to figure out what the heck “Gwinning” means, but he has a new female artist to push. It’s Dreamdoll, the girl who got kicked off Bad Girls Club (Season 16) for kicking another girl in the back. Classy. Bianca is back, Juju, Cam’Ron’s fiancee, has more prominent placement. Shout out to that intro credit status! Anyway, about Bianca, Remy and Juju come down on her in a loving, big sister kind of way way because she has been doing a lot more fighting than making music and carving out a reputation as being a hothead. This is setting us up for her beef with Bri, also a rapper, and she’s one of this season’s satellites. Snoop is back and so is…SAFAREE. He traded in his West Coast life for his return to NYC.

Yandy is back, and she’s grinding to make sure that she and Mendeecees’ kids are good while he is away. But there’s trouble brewing. Mendeecees’ mother, Judy, has bene keeping tabs on her, trying to make sure she remains committed to Mendeecees while he’s away, but things have gone too far. Mendeecees even has the nerve to chastise her for “dressing too sexy around her artists” (basically, this is gossip from his mother). But like, how about he shouldn’t have gotten locked up! How is Mendeecees trying to run ish from jail?

Judy is trying it too. She even dang near tried to fight Grafh when she walks in on Yandy putting lotion on him during a photoshoot. It was such a WTF moment, because it wasn’t even that serious. This is going to be interesting.

There’s an OG Latina artist named Anais in the game. Basically, she was popping once upon a time ago (people from the Bronx and/or the Dominican Republic probably remember her from the early ’00’s), but she took a break to get married and have kids. Now she wants to make a comeback and she will do it by any scandalous means necessary. She’s very flirtatious, like, habitual line-stepper flirtatious, and she’s working with Navarro with a manager (Navarro) who already says his girlfriend won’t like him working with her. Plus, Anais is still very much with her husband, who would prefer that she stay home with the family and not get back into music. You know where all of this is going.

Rich has diabetes, which has allegedly given him a new lease on life. He plans to stop creeping and focus on his career in music again. He’s managing Bri, Bianca’s nemesis. In fact, let’s cut to the club scene where Rich thought he was going to get them to squash their beef. HA! It does not go well at all. Bianca throws a shoe at Bri and we’re all just watching them look like twins in a sibling rivalry because again, they are almost the same person, and they’re accusing each other of jacking each other’s style.

Remy Ma and Papoose’s drama will come in because Papoose still wants his baby and he wants Remy to move forward with IVF. However, Remy wants to get back to work. It seems like she’s not over the trauma of her miscarriage and, IVF is a lot of work on a woman’s body. It’s understandable that she’d rather focus on work. But Pap is getting impatient. Hopefully they work it out.